READERS GUIDE
Reading Group Discussion Questions for Unreliable Narrator1. Unreliable Narrator is built around stories within stories: Hope’s journal, Rosie’s novels, Nat’s investigation, and everyone’s memories. What does the book suggest about who gets to control a story, and who gets to be seen as “reliable”?
2. Shadowlands is almost a character in the novel. What does the house represent to Hope at different points: freedom, beauty, belonging, danger, or something else entirely?
3. Hope believes for years that she is a murderer. How much does the novel ask us to separate intention from outcome? Is Hope guilty because of what she meant to do, or innocent because of what actually happened?
4. Which scene in the novel disturbed, surprised, or shocked you the most, and why?
5. Nat repeatedly worries that she is not a good enough mother. How does this connect to the book’s broader anxiety about whether love can damage the people we are meant to protect?
6. Delia is glamorous, wounded, generous, complicit, and mysterious. How did your opinion of her shift over the course of the novel? What does she reveal about survival and self-deception?
7. Unreliable Narrator often blurs the line between love and obsession. Where do you see that line most clearly crossed?
8. Rosie tells Hope that writers must become “burglars of life.” Where is the line between inspiration and theft?
9. Were you surprised by the novel’s ending? Why or why not?
10. If you could ask Araminta Hall one question about this story, its ending, or one of its characters, what would it be?
